Art by Ken Lashley
According to MyNewsLA.com, the lawsuit filed by Dwayne McDuffie’s widow Charlotte Fullerton over unpaid royalties from the company he co-founded, Milestone Media, has been resolved. The lawsuit, filed in 2017, alleged McDuffie’s colleagues, Denys Cowan, Derek Dingle, and Michael Davis-Lawrence, as well as Reginald Hudlin, had conspired to deprive Fullerton and her mother-in-law, Edna McDuffie Gardner, of their 50 percent stake by relaunching the company. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
Milestone was founded in 1993 by McDuffie, Cowan, Davis, and Dingle as a coalition of African-American artists and writers who wanted better representation in superhero comics. They created the Dakotaverse line of books, initially consisting of “Hardware,” “Icon,” “Blood Syndicate” and “Static,” which were published by DC Comics: the success of the series eventually led to the critically acclaimed Static Shock cartoon, and the characters becoming incorporated into the DC Universe. In 2015, four years after McDuffie’s death, DC and Milestone announced plans to reestablish the line under the new name Earth-M.
Despite the lawsuit, DC announced at 2017’s New York Comic Con that they intended to roll out the relaunched line the following spring, unveiling several books written by Reginald Hudlin with an array of artists including Ken Lashley, Kyle Baker, and Bill Sienkiewicz, as well as “Xombi” reboot named “Duo,” penned by Greg Pak. Ultimately, the books went unreleased, with DC declining to comment on the matter: similarly, McDuffie’s estate and Milestone have not commented on the end of the dispute.
